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How The Gerbera Colony Of Compensations Invaded Me

How The Gerbera Colony Of Compensations Invaded Me

During some kind of massive and rabid rodent infestation in my life and career, I was visited by the unforgettable unimaginably merciful visit of the Gerbera Colony of Compensations! Perhaps they were sent by heaven itself!

As isolation imprisoned me inside a rock hard tower of terrible anger, exhaustion, tottering disgust, pride and pettiness, the good things of my life began to fall away, like a box of sugar cubes left open so the angriest of red ants attacked. Then they began to bite at me, squeezed out every ounce of energy, till I crumbled.

There was such a scum of senseless futility over almost everything, that I just let go and sank into a vacuum of television and some good cooking. You Tube became my friend at first by screening illegally I suppose, all the episodes of Inspector Morse with the marvelous John Thaw shining away in it with all my favourite Western Classical music helping him to solve one intellectually stimulating murder mystery at Oxford University after another! They helped me to spend that lock- up -in lethargy time in somewhat sensible tv viewing.

I marveled again at the superior talent of a good actor who died too soon, (only 50 years old, grabbed by a virulent cancer.) That too in some way added to my grief! But every episode was stunning! I discovered more than 20 new Inspector Morse episodes that I had never seen before, years ago when it was on in cable television.

Then one day I made myself go to the park where the gerberas fell into my stupor of despair.

Gerberas I suspected, always seemed to have something up their sleeve to teach me that there is more to life than roses, lady! And they proved this by imitating umbrellas, hats, platters, gossips, friends, twins, kettles or just about anything they chose to be. They were certainly more innovative than roses, I had to admit reluctantly! While roses were just adorable, gerberas were more interesting!

I began to feel that if gerberas could often seemingly write poetry in the dark desolation of decay, so could I. In fact they were working on it right then and there, as I watched them. They were designing the oddest, most creative garden compositions. They were recklessly richly ornamented with too many buttons with which they adorned their center like clocks or calenders of change.

With their buttoned down dresses, they could become large circular floral platters of plenty, or jewels, ornaments of change, rainbows of radiance, glittering lanterns in the deathly dark, or anything they wanted to be.

The Gerberas egged me on to learn to be happy inside the dark, devouring despair of utter and total helplessness. I was all clocked out inside my personal universe. I longed to cut open a mountain that was too huge, too dark, too stony to be even scraped a little. But the gerberas reminded me that even as the mountain mulishly, pitilessly, stared back at me, I could explore the small new hills beginning to glimmer around it in the fog.

And as I watched hundreds of them, every time I visited the nursery, though I meanly met the roses first (my favourites) the gerberas always forgave me, twinkled and taught me one new lesson every time without fail: about picking myself up and beginning again.

Pics and text: daksha

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Published by sevenroses

I am Daksha, a journalist and writer from Bangalore interested in writing about gardening, health, consumer issues, environment and cats. I love watching mystery movies on television, reading, gardening, cooking and photography. I have a book on Amazon called The Dance of the Bhuleshwar Brush. It is a dark comedy about the messes and miseries surrounding arranged marriages.
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